I was surprised to discover that, in spite of the government's preoccupation with Brexit negotiations, the Transport Department has made some progress with its Major Road Network proposals – more or less on schedule. The 'Peninsula Transport Shadow Sub National Transport Body' has been set up, with its chief responsibility being to prioritise road schemes from the South West for submission to the Transport Department for approval and funding.

Ten schemes have been short-listed (seven MRN schemes and three 'Large Local Major' schemes, though the difference is not entirely clear). These include three in Somerset, one of them called 'A361 Glastonbury Bypass and Pilton'. Regarding this, Somerset County Council has produced an 'Options Assessment Report' on the basis of which a Glastonbury Southern Bypass has been proposed. The previously suggested northern route, along the old railway line behind the Tor, does not get a mention.

There are two options for the proposed southern bypass: the 'Short Route' – essentially the southern route that was included in the Town Council's survey last year, from Edgarley Road near Millfield Prep School to the junction between Bere Lane and Fisher's Hill – and a 'Long Route' that would continue across South Moor (or just above it along the foot of Wearyall Hill), cross the River Brue and join the A39 at the roundabout on the Glastonbury side of Street. The short route has an 'indicative scheme cost' of £40 million, and the long route £70 million (both of which figures are probably optimistically low). The County Council claims that the 'Benefit to Cost Ratio' in either case would be at least 10:1, on the basis of a so-called 'high-level benefits analysis' – presumably the kind of estimates and suppositions that were discredited by the CPRE two years ago in their report 'The end of the road?'.

The short route, of course, would not do the job; although it would bypass Chilkwell Street and Bere Lane, it would actually increase the volume of heavy traffic using Fisher's Hill and Street Road, and the endless debate would simply continue, just shifted along a bit. The long route, on the other hand, would have to cross a significant stretch of wetland and bridge the River Brue, very expensive engineering work which would almost certainly incur substantial cost over-runs. This is important because the Transport Department is only offering to provide funds up to £50 million per scheme, and there is an overall cap of £100 million on any one MRN project.

A minimum of 15% of the overall costs, and an expected average of 30%, would have to be met 'locally'. This would actually mean through partnership funding from housing and property developers, who would effectively be able to buy planning permission for development associated with the road scheme.

So what about the "and Pilton" that is tacked on to the end of the title of the proposal? The County Council's submission acknowledges that Pilton is affected by HGV traffic in much the same way as Glastonbury, though it avoids mentioning that if Glastonbury had a bypass but Pilton did not, overall traffic through Pilton would increase and the 'pinch point' there would become intolerable. What it does say is that "in Pilton the scheme options have not yet been established", which seems rather strange at this stage; but that "a key consideration" will be the nearby Glastonbury Festival site, presumably because they would like to put a definitive stop to traffic problems related to large numbers arriving for and leaving from the event. But how this can be included in the same scheme as a Glastonbury bypass and still be kept within what would clearly be tight budget restrictions is a mystery yet to be solved.

There is also the problem of Ashcott and Walton, which would need to be bypassed if this route were to become fit for purpose as part of the Major Road Network. The Ashcott and Walton bypass is also on the regional short-list, though included as an 'LLM' scheme rather than as part of the MRN, apparently because with an 'indicative cost' of £90 million it is outside the range of current MRN bids.

The Peninsula Transport Shadow Sub National Transport Body meets at County Hall in Exeter. It has five committee members including Councillor John Woodman, Somerset County Council's cabinet member for transport. There are also a number of co-optees but these do not include either of Glastonbury and Street's County Councillors – who have not even been kept informed of these developments. There was a meeting in Exeter on Friday March 1st at which it was agreed to choose three of the ten short-listed schemes in time to be presented for government perusal in July. The only scheduled meeting before then will be on May 24th. (Press and public are able to attend – except when items concerned with the nitty gritty of finances are being discussed; these are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act).

It seems rather unlikely, if only three schemes are to be chosen from the whole of the southwest, that more than one will be from Somerset. Peninsula Transport's three proposals will then be prioritised by the government along with other road schemes proposed from other regions. How many will actually be chosen is not clear. Any that do get through all these hoops will then be set to go ahead during the financial year 2024/25 – by which time anything could have happened to the UK's politics and economy, not to mention likely rising water levels on the Somerset Levels and Moors due to climate change. In my opinion, our MP James Heappey will only see his plan for a 'strategic road into the heart of Mendip' come about if he has a very persuasive word in the ear of his boss, Secretary of State for Transport Chris Grayling.

PS The road proposals mentioned above are not based on the 'transport project' that appeared in the Central Somerset Gazette on February 21st. They may be related, but that was for 'technical studies' by Mendip District Council, which is not the Highways Authority.

The Deep Adaptation Agenda is a creative response to the fast approaching likelihood of society collapsing under pressure from climate change and other threats to the environment. It was developed initially by Professor Jem Bendell of the University of Cumbria, in a paper published last July.

On-line, the paper has been downloaded by well over 100,000 people and there is now an audio version available. Very briefly, its conclusions are that disruption of society through the effects of climate change is now inevitable and noit far away; that the old system’s days are numbered and any attempt to ‘adapt’ through such things as flood prevention schemes or carbon sequestering can do no more than marginally reduce the effects.

At the same time, he points out that those who take this idea to heart often begin to live their lives more authentically. If we consider how we would want to spend our time if that time is limited, it can bring what is really important into focus.

In January he followed the paper up with a lengthy blog post, ‘Hope and Vision in the Face of Collapse’. (Scroll down if new stuff has appeared since). The shift in his thinking over the intervening six month period is noticeable and very interesting. Rather than hoping that we can somehow avert a climate catastrophe, he introduces the idea of ‘radical hope’, that it could be possible to get through to the other side of the crisis and to take part in creating a new society with new values, radically different from the one we are currently living in.

My intention here, however, is not simply to repeat and summarise his thoughts. If you are interested, then please follow the links above. (There is also a 14-minute YouTube video that is perhaps a good place to start). What excites me is that at last a mainstream academic is saying such things; and now he is hanging out with Extinction Rebellion activists, exchanging ideas with Sufi mystics, and prominently using the word ‘love’ in his writing. Something important has clearly happened for him.

We don’t know exactly what will happen or when, and we don’t have the power to control it. What I hope is that we can start to have this conversation, the ‘what if this might actually be true’ conversation, in the community here in Glastonbury – and perhaps this could encourage the same to happen elsewhere. I will finish with a quote from Jem Bendell that seems particularly to the point:

“I am beginning to sense that we can feel and realise peace and happiness through it all. That will not happen through a desperate belief in stories of personal or collective salvation in this world or the next. Instead, we can turn away from frantic chatter or action, relax into our hearts, notice the impermanence of life, and let love for this momentary experience of life in all its flavours flood our being and shape our next steps.”

This little book is my latest publication, though it is not actually for sale. It is somehow too personal for that, but it is available and has so far been well received – in spite of one very embarrassing spelling mistake. It is based on extracts from my notebook, written during regular visits to the River Brue in Somerset over the course of a year.

It begins in November, that being the Celtic new year. It was written at a time of increasing climatic instability; spring came early, but then there was snow in March. The summer was unusually hot and dry, the autumn mild, the future unpredictable.

This is the third book in a series of four, based on the Four Point Plan put forward by our Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee. A summary of the four points is contained in the book (page 23). The third point is Prayer. This book is not about prayer, though perhaps it is a prayer.

Certainly much of it is wonder and praise. Other parts of it are difficult and disturbing. The River Spirit has many moods, and thankfully they do not include despair. Like the rest of the natural world, however, She is in deep and mortal danger.​Although it is not for sale, I shall give a copy to anyone who buys or who has bought from me ‘The River’ (2015) or ‘Petroc of Glastonbury’ (2017). A fourth book, quite different again, is still to come and the intention will be to explore the fourth point, ‘Action’.

I have decided to stop taking part in the Slow Crossing actions that have been taking place in Bere Lane, directed at HGVs coming through the town on the A361. I am not trying to persuade anyone else to stop, though I am still not clear what the main objective is and how the campaign sees it as being achieved. My real reasons are more complicated.

About 15 years ago I decided to give up political activism for two reasons:1. Because both electoral politics and pressure-group campaigning tends to polarise people into ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.2. Because political campaigning requires huge amounts of effort and organisation, often with only an outside chance that this will actually achieve what is wanted. I decided instead to put my energy into things that I knew would make the world a better place, even if only in a tiny way. This decision has been vindicated on a number of occasions.

When it came to the present road campaign, both for the sake of supporting friends and because I am acutely aware of the injustice and oppression created by the vastly excessive traffic that rolls past our front doors, I nevertheless entered wholeheartedly into it – and I believe made a difference by raising awareness of the issue and helping to stimulate a community-wide discussion about the real implications of the suggested bypass. Having done that, it seemed only right that I should put my hand up and join the campaign to have HGVs re-routed away from Glastonbury.

However, the slow crossing actions seem to have invoked precisely my two reasons for withdrawing from political activism 15 years ago. Arguments on Facebook and elsewhere, and the apparent effect of having otherwise sympathetic local councillors distancing themselves from our campaign, show the harmful effects of polarisation; at the same time the County Council is close to bankruptcy and even if they had the political will to re-route traffic away from Glastonbury, they couldn’t afford to do so (sadly, whichever route was chosen, it would involve far more than just erecting new sign posts – as the Green Party would have us believe).

I remain convinced that there is a solution to this dilemma, but that it may be one that no-one has yet thought of, and that it will require the whole town pulling together to bring it about. So I want to put my focus on building bridges, and if possible finding people with imagination to work with in that direction.

This is Ursula, one of the dummies created by the A361 Direct Action Group. She is standing in Chilkwell Street and she becomes quite a talking point, with people stopping to admire her and sometimes taking photographs. I am glad that she's standing outside my house; I have provided her with a placard, and found an old pair of wellies to give her feet more substance and to keep them warm and dry.

She seems to me to be a good-humoured, creative way to gently make a point about the traffic, and sometimes to start conversations. She might even help to slow the traffic down. I am hoping that the idea will catch on, and a growing number of friendly 'protesters' will appear along the A361 roadside. I can recommend having such a figure outside your home.

There are a couple more looking for a place to be, and I'm rather surprised that they haven't been snapped up in no time. Don't be shy! If you'd like one installed in your vicinity, contact Ramona: ramonabelcher23@gmail.com – or else make your own! Personally, I'd like to see them all along the roadside from Coursing Batch to the Street Road, as an artistic feature of Glastonbury life that in itself could attract some publicity. She's an enhancement to life beside the County Freight Route.

The improved 'indicative' map from the government's MRN consultation last January. This shows without any doubt that the A361 through Glastonbury is intended to be included in the new road network.

At the A361 Action Group meeting it was announced that my blog was a useful source of information regarding the A361, and specifically about the campaign to reduce HGV traffic on this road and to avoid a bypass through Glastonbury's iconic landscape as an inappropriate way to solve the problem.

Well, the blog has not been updated lately so I thought I'd better make something 'useful' available. The reason I haven't put much up on the blog for a while is that I have been busy writing up the history of the A361 and the campaign, some of it based on a detailed examination of the minutes of A361 committee meetings and other relevant Town Council meetings etc.

The first two articles are mainly of historical interest, though I think they provide good background material for anyone with a historical frame of mind. The third is mainly based on the A361 committee's minutes, and attempts to draw out the narrative of what happened when the Town Council effectively took control of the 'Lighten the Load' campaign; I found the story quite shocking myself. The fourth is my own story of how I got involved last October. The fifth is the even more shocking story of how a few Town Councillors who are also members the A361 committee put pressure on the Neighbourhood Plan group in an attempt to get MP James Heappey's proposal for a Glastonbury bypass included in or with the Neighbourhood Plan questionnaire – an attempt that was in fact unlawful. The sixth is an account of the Town Council's so-called 'Road Consultation' that followed. The list to date is as follows:

I hope that these articles will be useful campaigning material, and I certainly believe that the truth of how the Town Council have (mis)handled the whole situation needs to be known. All of these are still work in progress and if anyone has additional material I will be pleased to hear from you. I am currently working on a piece concerned with what the concept of 'sacred landscape' means to me, and what its implications might be. Further articles are to follow.

Thursday evening was the inaugural meeting of the new A361 Action Group, held in St Benedict's Church. It went really well, after wobbling a little at the beginning when Indra and Rob must have been slightly unsure of themselves. One or two people disagreed with the plan to divide the meeting into smaller groups to discuss specific campaigning topics. Perhaps there should have been a discussion and a vote on that subject, but anyway the result was that the Tories in the back row jumped on the idea, and then they walked out. Quite a lot of people followed, perhaps because they hadn't realised that this was going to be a 'business' meeting.

Those who remained had a really productive time, with groups established to work on: gathering evidence for damage to property and health; liaison with other parishes along the potential route; direct action; legal issues and a possible challenge to the establishment of the A361 freight route status; looking at case studies for towns in the area that have successfully established 7.5 tonne weight limit restrictions; and press and publicity work. Anyone who is interested in the group generally or in contributing to one of these working groups, please contact me in the first instance: bruce@glastonbury.co.ukI shall pass your details on to the appropriate person.

MENDIP SECONDARY GROWTH AREA​Thursday’s meeting was brilliant, with just one problem. This was to do with James Heappey MP, who was mentioned several times – mostly by people who wanted him to be there to hear the strength of their feelings, but he was not there, even though he had arranged to address a meeting in Walton the following evening. So, just when things felt like they were going well, this arrived late that night:

Walton Parish Council meeting, attended by James Heappey: Friday 8 June

JH spoke and answered questions for one and a half hours. Here's a brief summary of the main points he made, together with some quotations :

"Mendip" (an area encompassing Frome, Wells, Glastonbury, Street, Shepton) has been identified as a "Secondary Growth Area" i.e an area ripe for development.

Better road links from the M5 to Mendip are needed. We want to plug Mendip in. A39/A361 is the only realistic option.

New roads come when there is an economic opportunity.

HGV traffic is not a bad sign. No traffic means a stagnant economy.

The question Walton must answer (same as the one I put to Glastonbury) is:How many houses – in thousands – is a new road worth?

Glastonbury Town Council must make up its mind what it wants before I go to meet with them.

JH seems determined that by-passing the various pinch points in Pilton, Glastonbury, Walton and Ashcott is the way forward and he several times brushed aside questions and suggestions to designate other existing roads as county freight routes, or as viable alternative routes for aggregate lorries.

Much of the Q&A was then about Hinkley traffic, and the A361 committee are aware of much of these details ...

From August we can expect many more aggregate lorries on the A361.

Background: For the first stage of the build, aggregate has come from a quarry near Cheddar by road via Axbridge to Hinkley. From August a different aggregate, coming from Whatley near Frome, will be needed to make concrete for the next phase.

When EDF applied for planning they said this would be transported from Whatley by rail and then sea, arriving at a jetty at Hinkley C. However, the jetty will not be ready until next year, so from August onwards all aggregate from Whatley will be transported by road, along the A361. This will involve 15 times as many lorries as currently travel this route.

Actions to mitigate the effects of 100s more lorries each day:

1. JH recommends in, say, early September when this traffic has reached a peak flow, for local communities to mount some form of protest.

2. JH is in discussions with EDF to have night time limits set on Hinkley traffic.

3. EDF have failed to meet their planning commitment. Although they cannot be stopped from using the roads, they could/should be leant on to provide compensation, to individuals along the route and/ or to local communities. Local communities can raise their concerns and e.g.if there are traffic calming measures, road safety etc. needed along this route we should apply to EDF for funding.

4. Trucks to and from Hinkley are (in theory) identified with an "HPC" sign on the windscreen. Any driver of a truck who infringes regulations (speed limits, curfew times etc) will lose his (her) job.

JH is going to arrange for info packs for Walton/Glastonbury/Pilton etc stating what the regulations are, and also arrange for a more easily visible way of identifying Hinkley vehicles.

Some of this is misleading – for instance EDF have been granted a 'variation order' which increases the number of lorries they are allowed and may mean that their 'planning commitment' has been adjusted. On this subject, it is interesting to note what Somerset County Council representatives said to a meeting in Glastonbury Town Hall 12 years ago. ​

I have had trouble uploading things to my website ... finally solved ...

'As full as I've seen it when there's been no buffet': Glastonbury Town Hall on June 7th.

The meeting in the Town Hall was brilliant. The hall was full – 250 people or so – and nearly all of them passionately in favour of protecting Glastonbury’s sacred and iconic landscape, with many ready to take direct action if necessary in support of the demand to have the County Freight Route through Glastonbury redirected. This was in complete contrast to James Heappey’s assurance that feedback regarding his bypass suggestion has been ‘overwhelmingly positive’.

A brief report appeared that evening on Facebook:

The traffic down Chilkwell St and Bere Lane is appalling and getting worse because of Hinckley C. [Hinkley C is one element but it was also said that both the number and the size of trucks has generally increased over the years].

Chilkwell Street is technically illegal for these lorries to use [this is a reference to the narrowness of the road near to Chalice Well gardens].

No-one wants a bypass. End of.

The consultation process was seriously flawed. Many people didn't get a survey and for those who did, the survey apparently made it look as though a new road was the only option. A data scientist stood up and said that if he'd presented it, he would have been fired.

Serious pressure needs to be put on MDC [actually Somerset CC] to divert haulage companies (and sat nav companies) because there are other routes, e.g. down to the big arterial A303.

That pressure probably needs to take the form of direct action, something that Glastonbury is very good at as there are so many activists here.

There was a call for transparency in the Town Council as to who suggested the survey in its current form, and a declaration of vested interests.

Vested interest declaration please from James Heappey, who seems heavily invested in a new road/Somerset E/W corridor to the M5 without other options - plus housing and commercial development to [help] pay for the new road, across a level 3 floodplain which is currently owned by other people, several of whom were at the meeting and who do not want to sell or split their land. Do write to your MP.

There were apparently ten Town Councillors present, but apart from the Greens who were running the meeting they all kept very quiet. There were a couple of brave HGV drivers who spoke, but their assurance that modern trucks are clean and emission-free carried little credence in the face of people’s actual experience of soot build-up on their window sills and some of their children’s asthma being made worse. There is also the noise, light pollution and on-going damage to the road surface to contend with. Sending all this heavy traffic through Glastonbury is inappropriate or worse.

Neither the MP nor either of Glastonbury & Street’s County Councillors were present, though Liz Leyshon (Lib-Dem) had said she would convey the feelings of this meeting to County Hall. Holly White, from a farming family who own land that would be split in two if the railway line proposal were to go ahead, offered to attend the next County Council meeting and speak for the three minutes allowed to members of the public.

There were also local councilors and members of the public from Pilton, Street, Walton and St Cuthbert Out (around Wells) at the meeting, and a suggestion that they should co-operate rather than working separately. How this could be followed up effectively would be a challenge, but with the right leadership would be well worth taking on.

Glastonbury’s four remaining Green Party Town Councillors had jointly written a letter to the paper last week, stating their belief that there should be no new road and HGV traffic should be moved to a different route. The meeting strongly supported this stance, and the energy ran high. It seemed very hopeful that they could feel the strength of their own constituency supporting them. One man who said he had voted for Heappey at the last election had decided never to do so again, and one woman who had supported the old railway line route for as bypass in the ‘consultation’ said she had changed her mind as a result of the meeting. Mostly, however, this was alternative Glastonbury empowering itself and perhaps realising its potential political strength.

I put in an official complaint to the Town Council regarding their hopelessly flawed 'Road Consultation'. That was nearly two weeks ago, and so far I've only had a formal acknowledgement that it has been received and will be dealt with 'in due course'.

We now have a new mayor. According to the Council's complaints procedure the mayor should deal with complaints if the Town Clerk cannot provide a satisfactory answer. However it also says that the mayor should not deal with it if the mayor is the one complained about. I have not complained about anyone in person, but Denise Abbot was Chair of the A361 committee at the time that all these things happened, and they were largely done in the name of that committee. She would not be a suitable person to deal with this complaint.

I am sending this letter because I wish to bring your attention to a number of damaging flaws in the Town Council’s recent road consultation, its questionnaire form and the analysis of its results.

I was one of several signatories to a letter sent on 14th March to the MP for the Wells constituency, James Heappey. This highlighted the flaws, essentially as listed below, and asked him to use his influence with Town Councillors to have the Road Consultation withdrawn and if possible re-run, with necessary improvements, at a later date.

There has been no reply to this letter and things have now moved on. I have spoken to the other signatories and I now feel it is necessary to present this as an official complaint to the Town Council. I would ask you to make Town Councillors aware of the contents of this letter at their meeting on Tuesday April 10th. The flaws to which I refer are as follows:

• There was insufficient time given for preparing the consultation properly, for distributing the questionnaire, or for public responses. In some cases the questionnaire forms were delivered only a few days before the date for their return, whilst some households did not receive them at all.• There was a lack of any explanation as to why the hurried timetable was tied to, and determined by, the national Major Road Network (MRN) Consultation deadline of March 19th. The foreshortened deadline undoubtedly contributed to a lack of adequate consideration in the preparation of the consultation documents.• No attempt was made to encourage public discussion and debate of the issues before or during the consultation, and in particular there has been no Town Hall meeting.• No space was provided on the questionnaire forms for more than one person per household to respond, calling into question its democratic integrity.• No information was provided about the MRN, which the suggested bypasss would be a part of’; nor about its implications, which would inevitably include an overall increase in traffic.• There was no indication that details of the MRN programme, including proposals for its national, regional and local bureaucratic structure, was available to be examined online – in fact no indication that the bypass proposal would be anything but a local scheme.

With regard to the second part of question 1, which asked us to choose between several different routes and options:

• No information was provided about the possible disadvantages of ‘Route A’, for instance damage to the environment and landscape, the likely detrimental effect on the local tourist industry resulting from such damage, or engineering problems related to building a road on peat soil on a floodplain and the consequent cost.• There was virtually no information provided at all about ‘Route B’, in particular no explanation of what led to the ‘changes in local government priorities’ that had apparently caused its abandonment (nearly 50 years ago), nor whether they are realistically likely now to be changed after all.• There was no information provided about any possible alternative routes.• Similarly, there was no information provided about any possible alternative solutions.

With regard to questions 2-4, which asked whether ‘additional housing and commercial development’ is acceptable:

• There was a failure to make clear that the MRN funding regime would mean that development and a proportion of developer funding for a bypass would be a necessary condition for it to be constructed.• There was a complete failure to provide any indication of the scale of such development, making informed consideration of the proposal impossible.• There was also no indication of where the development would be sited. Along most of the ‘northern route’ land adjacent to the old railway line land is Grade 3 floodplain, and would be unsuitable for housing or commercial development.

Finally, the analysis of the results was similarly flawed:

• The ‘headline figure’ was 76.5% of respondents in favour of ‘a relief road’. However, a relief road without substantial development is not going to be on offer. The number of respondents in favour of a relief road and who also felt that development is acceptable was actually 59%. The difference is due entirely to the questionnaire being insufficiently clear about the necessity for development if the scheme is to be considered.

• Of these 59%, 13% favoured the unlikely ‘southern route’. Those in favour of the ‘northern route’ as well as associated development were only 46%. This appears to be the Council’s favoured option, and the figure of 46% should have been the ‘headline’ – though in fact it was avoided altogether.

• This figure would undoubtedly have been lower still if the questionnaire had included a realistic estimate of the scale of the necessary development. If the question had been ‘do you feel that building an additional 1,000 houses, or the equivalent in commercial development, is acceptable?’ then many people would have considered that this was a price too high to pay. It is, however, a likely scenario if a bypass were to be built along the full length of the old railway line.

Presentation of this complaint should set in motion the Council’s published complaints procedure. My opinion is still that the entire consultation is so badly flawed that it should be dropped completely and re-run, properly drafted and with adequate information for people to make informed decisions. My understanding of the Town Council’s complaints procedure is that it would provide an opportunity for discussion of the various issues and there may be room for compromise, though if it does not produce an acceptable result then the matter will ultimately be referred to the Local Government Ombudsman

I do hope, however, that this will not be necessary. My impression is that all members of the Council and the A361 Committee are, in their own ways, wanting to do their best for Glastonbury in a very difficult situation. I particularly like the first two stages of Councillor Tucker’s proposal for a three-stage strategy. My hope is that this process can help us all to arrive at a potential solution – a third stage – that the whole town can enthusiastically support.